Food: A History of Sila Part 5, Chilean Cuisine

If you were to go back into this blog to around January or February, you would find a few blogs about the different places and my favorite foods there. I decided to skip through the Caribbean and Bahamas because they had only mediocre food and awful selection unless it was grouper or bananas. Florida just had an American grocery store, which was pretty awesome- especially after the slim pickings in the Bahamas, and delicious citrus. Panama was just generally pretty good fruit but we did have some delicious Panamanian food at the Icaza's house. In the Galapagos, I was too into the wildlife to notice food but there were good pears. Rapa Nui had fine, although not exceptional, fruit. The real food highlight was when a nice Rapa Nui lady gave us a huge bag of avocados that made delicious guacamole for the first five days offshore.

Chile has wonderful food. The highlights are, without a doubt, seafood and apples (see the pictures at the end). The top three seafood experiences so far are the mussels, the crab, and the cherry stones. In Puerto Montt, we got a few pounds of fresh mussels. The mussels were steamed and then put on buttery pasta. The two times we have eaten them, they were delicious. They are easily my favorite shellfish. We also found smoked mussels, which are great because they taste good and they keep, so we can have them several days after leaving town. 

About ten days ago, I was doing some schoolwork when I saw a boat rowing up. In the bow, there was a bucket. The five of us went up to greet the two men. The had four centolla, False Southern Chilean King Crab, in the bucket. They offered to trade all of the struggling crabs for a pack of cigarettes. We did not have any onboard, but we offered to trade boxes of wine that had been purchased for trade. They happily took the deal of three boxes of wine and about $3.50 in pesos to buy cigarettes. We were thrilled with the trade, and so were they.

I was nervous about cleaning them. I had studied carefully how to do this but I was still nervous. Big Jack and I would take them by the legs and smash them head first against an edge of the boat.  We then ripped of the legs and removed all the guts. we could only fit two crabs worth of legs into our biggest pot. When they were done steaming, we picked and ate the legs, removing the rich buttery meat. The next batch we picked and saved and Mama made a delicious sauce for pasta the next day. Sometimes I wonder if we eat better on Sila then we did in Leadville.

One evening at low tide,  I asked if I could go ashore. Big Jack, and JackRabbit both came with me. There were a bunch of people digging on the beach below the high-tide line. After a few minutes of talking and digging, we were digging the large clams and handing them to the locals. I soon mastered a tactic of digging where clams stuck the edge of their shell out of the mud and squirted water. I looked for a squirt, looked where it had come from to see if the clam was visible. If it was, I dug immediately and almost always found one. If there wasn't anything in sight, then I dug anyway and only occasionally found something. We eventually went back to the boat due to shivering hands and a blister on my palm. The next morning, little JackRabbit and I went back. We dug three fourths of a bucket full and returned to Sila for breakfast. They soaked all day in a bucket of saltwater. Steamed and picked and then served on pasta, they were delicious. Although I do not like cherrystones as much as mussels, these were better because I knew I dug them myself.

There is one sad thing about seafood harvesting. It is called Red Tide. Red Tide is a Paralytic Shellfish Bacteria. It is fatal because it paralizes your respiratory system. If you live twelve hours after being infected, you will probably live. Testing the water and shellfish for red tide is effective, although it requires technical equipment. With immediate medical attention, you may survive being infected. (I got these facts from my fishing book) Onboard Sila, we have neither the equipment to test for it or a way to cure it so we cannot collect shellfish. We could only collect there because, there was a shellfish farm and the owners of the shellfish farm test daily for red tide. In addition, one of the locals ate a raw cherrystone clam the first night, and was back to digging more clams the next morning!

The other major food that we are enjoying in Chile is apples. We have tons of apples. Recently I ate six in one day. They are all crunchy, not too sweet, not too sour, and carry pockets of juice. We have three hammocks of apples.  We also have two huge baskets of apples. everything is jam packed with these local treats. - Porter

Here I am cutting into a crab that wouldn't break open with Big Jack with JackRabbit as our supervisor.

JackRabbit and I hold up two of the crabs.

I am opening up a leg trying to get the rich tasty meat.

Here I am in front of fresh shellfish in a market

This is some sea urchin meat that we tried. It tasted like fish, but a little more slimy. It was served raw, with just some lemon juice on it.

Here is Jack Rabbit showing you one of the three hammocks of apples. Mama says he looks like Vanna White. I don't know who that is.

These two baskets are stuffed with apples.

Here is another stand that is selling fish, octupi(hanging) and urchin in little orange containers. We generally don't buy octopus because it is too chewy and we don't like it as much as mussels and clams.

Here is the market's cheese stand where we bought our cheese. Now the blocks of cheese are treating with a little vinegar to prevent mold and are stored under the floorboard on Sila. We will have great cheese for months!